I take hold of that cloud and delve in. The Cloud of Unknowing is where you come to Father God. It is simple, because you don't have to have an image of God in your mind. You come to him in a great cloud and direct all of your love into his presence. You approach him as the unseen God. All of your anxious thoughts and distractions, you place them under a "cloud of forgetting". Then using a word that captures the essence of your prayer, you direct your word into the cloud and open yourself to however God desires to reveal himself. "One little gasp contains the height, depth, width, and breadth of the spirit." (The Cloud of Unknowing edited by Bernard Bangley)
This is a way for me to pursue relationship with Abba God, which has often not come very naturally to me. I more often come to Jesus in prayer. But I love being opened to the mystery of the fullness of the Godhead. And when you take all pressure off of yourself to try and imagine or picture what God looks like, you are presenting yourself to God, as he is. It provides a spacious place to get to know him without preconceived ideas about what he is like. What we think Father God is like can sometimes block us from who he truly is, and who he wants to be for us.
So I take a word, LOVE, and I direct it into the cloud. Over and again, this simple prayer, LOVE. Or, TRUST. Many words don't have a place here. It is simple devotion to the heart of God from your heart. And then you find yourself in the presence, and in the presence of God, his mystery beckons you to deeper places with him. And then you start to feel his heart and receive from him. You are open to whatever he wants to share with you in this great cloud of his presence.
How do you experience God as Father?
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